


vampyroteuthis infernalis

by ohtempora



Category: The Ocean (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Cephalopods, Friendship, Gen, Ocean, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 22:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17089100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/pseuds/ohtempora
Summary: Vampire squids from hell! Or: the oceanic adventures of a particularly grumpy one, and his best friend Fred.





	vampyroteuthis infernalis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sinesofinsanity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinesofinsanity/gifts).



> happy yuletide, sinesofinsanity! i loved your letter and spent some time on the noaa website and subsequently discovered the delightful existence of the vampire squid. a deep wikipedia dive later, here i am. 
> 
> the t rating is for, uh, language, on the part of the cephalopods.

1000 fathoms under the sea — in the depths, where the water is dark like velvet, the ocean's midnight zone — marine snow falls for weeks before it finally reaches the ocean floor. It's beautiful, and strange, one of the last unexplored places on the planet. We thought there was nothing down there for almost 2000 years. It took centuries to discover how wrong we were. How much there is.  
  
"No shit," says Kyle. "It's fucking dark."  
  
The inorganic creature floating near him does not respond.  
  
The vampire squids all know about the explorers from the surface. They peer at them, examine them. Kyle's not sure what's so interesting about a bunch of cephalopods in the deep sea. Plenty of them to go around, yeah? All kinds. They don't eject ink like their cousins, nor are they giant, not particuarly the stuff of myth and legend. They're not smug like the octopi. They've got bioluminescence, sure, but that's not exactly rare down here in the deep. The explorers gotta get out more.

Fred's fascinated by the inorganic explorers for some reason. Kyle thinks Fred needs to get out more, too.

There aren't many of them, their species, and significant encounters are uncommon. Fred is around. Sometimes they meet up with others of their kind, who warn them about explorers, or true predators, or spots where the water is too warm.

“It's watching us,” Fred says. “See? It’s greeting us.”

Kyle huffs at him. “It's going to leave. It always heads up-ocean. They don’t stay down here.”

Fred's filaments retract slightly. “It comes back.”

It's just the surface-dwellers, Kyle thinks. The creatures of light and sunshine. Too fascinated with the depths, with the deep rumbles of the Earth. “Because it doesn't have anything better to do.” He moves back, out of its reach.

“You don’t know that.”

“Stalking an explorer is fine,” Kyle says. “Whatever, Freddie. You do you. But I'm hungry. I want some prawns and snow for lunch.”

“You're always hungry,” Fred says, which is the usual prelude to a discussion of metabolic rates and how maybe Kyle should pay more attention to other interests instead of food. Which. Kyle's heard it before.

He drifts off.

He rather likes it down here, the deep sea, the absence of light. The upper levels of the ocean seem more crowded — he's spoken to the deep-sea divers, the seal that said it wouldn't eat him and followed through on the promise. Maybe it's the light filtering in that makes everyone feel that way, sending beams through the water, revealing too much. Or it's the humans on the surface coming down, sending more than their inorganic explorers. Kyle's never had time for wishing he was something else.

Maybe the deep sea is dark, but it's the good kind of dark, cold but not icy. The pressure is a heavy weighted blanket. Marine snow drifts down, bringing the stories of the surface with it.

“Kyle! Wait up!”

“Oh, you're back.”

Fred's zig-zagging, zooming, huge blue eyes glowing. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I'm hungry too. It's lunchtime, like you said.”

“The explorer take off for the surface?”

“It went somewhere, I guess” Fred admits, the closest he’ll get to a yes, and Kyle slows so he can catch up. Fred wiggles a few tentacles at him when he does.

A long time ago, some of their kind got hauled up to the surface. They didn't come back. Kyle doesn't care much about being watched, even if he's not fascinated by it, but he doesn't want one of the explorers to seize him, to study him, to pull him up and away towards the light where he doesn’t belong.

They call them _vampyroteuthis infernalis_ in their dead language,up on the surface; in their living language they call them vampire squids. Their species is older than any language the surface-dwellers ever spoke. So what if they aren't as big as an octopus or as impressive as the giant mammals. Kyle doesn't give a shit. They survived down here in the dark, they were the only ones, everyone else of their kind became fossils or muck or food.

Fred drifts, and Kyle drifts with him, through the murky, moving water. They extend filaments to snag food when they sense it, bits and bobs of debris and decay passing by. Fred keeps blinking on and off, light and then dark and light again, blending in and out of the ocean.

“See, I told you,” Kyle says. “Eating would help.”

Fred pokes him with one outstretched filament.

“Ow! Motherfucker.” Kyle flashes back at him, then goes back to eating, slow and lazy with it.

The ocean doesn't speak to them, but they know it: know its rhythms, its patterns, know how far deep they can safely go. Know how to survive it — the unrelenting water and the pressure and the predators, the diving creatures with their warm and sharp teeth — and how to dodge the inorganic explorers who want to pull them up and away from home.

Well, maybe less Fred, on that last part. He’s a work in progress, Kyle thinks fondly, not that he’d ever admit that fondness aloud.

“Do you think it’s nice up on the surface?”

“I think it’s bright,” Kyle tells him. “What’re you going to do up there in all the light? You won’t look so impressive then. We’ve seen the explorers, they have their own light.”

“It’s not like ours,” Fred says. “It’s fake light.”

“So they carry tiny suns with them.” Kyle flips his webbed fins at him. “Who cares.”

“Alright, alright,” Fred says. He starts drifting downwards, deeper into the ocean. Relieved, Kyle follows him, filaments waving gently in the current. He’d rather go down than up, into the water’s comforting, heavy embrace.

They're the last of their kind, an ancient breed still hanging around. It’s nice to have someone, even if it’s Fred and his fascination with the seas above them. Nice to have a friend. Kyle drifts off further into the deep, blinking out all his lights, until he blends into the ocean, becomes part of the sea.


End file.
